REVIEW: Pianist Zuber's music is physical and metaphysical

Pianist Eric Zuber, a young musician with a long list of competition titles under his belt, performed a really rather unusual recital for the Artists Series this weekend. Was it good? Well, yes, his performance was of an astoundingly high caliber, but more importantly, he really had us thinking.

Before playing a note he addressed the audience stating that in his view music fell into two categories — the physical and the metaphysical. On one hand is music that is purely emotional or descriptive.

On the other there is music that is spiritual, beyond any literal understanding or knowing, and thus, metaphysical.

Zuber primed us for the listening experience by indicating that the works by Chopin and Rachmaninov were in the physical category while the late Beethoven Piano Sonata in C minor, Op. 11 was metaphysical.

Especially as a young man, Frederic Chopin composed music steeped in the sentimental and romantic.

Pianist Eric Zuber / COURTESY PHOTO

Zuber easily played with our emotions in Chopin's Andante Spianato and Grand Polonaise, Op. 22. First tender then more exuberant, he wisely steered clear of flamboyance.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there was even more physicality in Zuber's rendering of six of Chopin's Etudes, Op. 10. Studies such as this are created to test and strengthen the technical capacity of the musician. No. 2 Tristesse and No. 12 Revolutionary, well loved and oft played, were matched with the less familiar of this opus.

The set provided a fresh taste of Chopin while giving Zuber a chance to dazzle simply by playing the notes with spirited ease.

The descriptive titles, such as Sunshine and Guitar, provided hints to our imagination. No. 1, Arpeggio brought to mind a frolicking colt in the pasture as we all watched Zuber's right hand gallop up and down the keyboard thanks to the overhead image projected on an above-stage screen.

Having suggested that Rachmaninov's Preludes No. 5, 10 and 12 from Op. 32 and No. 2 from Op. 23 musically described the Russian landscape, Zuber may have been stretching his point. But what did that matter when the music was so poignant and thoughtfully delivered?

We've seen more than our share of flashy young pianists on the circuit of competitions where technique and showmanship are rewarded. This Eric Zuber could not have been farther from this stereotype.

More poet than showman, Zuber's program choices alone set him apart from the crowd. Concluding the concert with the last piano sonata from the pen of the then entirely deaf Beethoven, Zuber emphasized the depth of what may have been the composer's search for meaning at this stage of his life.

Two opposing movements — one opening with chords like fists pounding in anguish and the second with an intimate moment of peaceful resignation — pass us from unjust worldly burdens to a heavenly transcendence. Wisely, Zuber's encore was of the same poetic timbre — a meditative reverie in Robert Schumann's Traumerei.